A Critique of Liberal Scholarship - Part 7 - A critique of Haenchen’s attempt to use Acts 1:9–11 as support for the theory of the delayed Parousia
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1996.
Editor's note: This article is one part of a multi-part series which David Gooding wrote to critique in a scholarly way some of the work of a number of liberal scholars. The series comprises:
- Can following liberal scholarship lead to a loss of faith?
- Following liberal scholarship can lead to biased research
- Observations on Herman Hendrickx's 'The Accounts of the Resurrection'
- Observations on the interpretation of parables given by liberal scholars
- A critique of Jeremias's interpretation of the parable of the Pounds (Luke 19:11–27)
- A critique of Joachim Jeremias's interpretation of Mark 4
- A critique of Haenchen's attempt to use Acts 1:9–11 as support for the theory of the delayed Parousia
- A critique of Jeremias's interpretation of the parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1–8)
- A critique of Beare's interpretation of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31)
A classicist, like the present writer, who for any reason wanders into the field of modern Actaforschung, will immediately be impressed with the great changes that have come about in that field over the past thirty years. Days were when, of all the areas of New Testament study, Acts was the field in which the classicists would feel that they had most in common with the New Testament scholars. Acts was, on the face of it, a history book. Acts talked of travels and happenings in the ancient classical world: its geographical details could be verified by classical scholars. Acts spoke of Roman law and provincial administration: its statements could be tested by experts in Roman law. Acts contained speeches just like Thucydides' history: and therefore, just like the speeches in that history, Acts called for investigation to see how much of its speeches could be regarded as representing the sentiments of the original speakers and how much was the imaginative creation of the historian. Acts raised the question of what sources Luke used and of how far Luke rewrote those sources. This is no new question for a classicist used to studying Livy's rewriting of Polybius. The classical historian felt at home in Acts.
But things have changed. It is not that the historical approach to the study of Acts has been dropped; but since Dibelius and Vielhauer, we no longer have one approach, but three: the historical, the literary and the theological. And without doubt, as recent reviews of Actaforschung make clear, the greatest of these is the theological.
It is theology, for instance, that has pushed the painstaking work of the classicist Sherwin White so much into the shade that W. G. Kümmell, in the seventeenth edition of his Introduction to the New Testament (1973; English translation: 1975), can write thirty-eight pages on Acts without once mentioning White's work. And from one point of view this is understandable. If Luke has, as many theologians maintain, deliberately altered the eschatological beliefs of the early Christians and, knowingly or unknowingly, completely misrepresented the theology of Paul, then it would be little comfort to know that he has got right such peripheral matters as details of Roman law and provincial administration.
Admittedly, Luke's remarkably consistent accuracy in these matters might well give the theologians reason to pause long enough to ask themselves the question how a writer, who shows such detailed accuracy in the circumstantial detail of the central events he is recording, could manage to get the central events themselves so wrong. And if there is any substance at all in J. A. T. Robinson's recent claim that Acts, in common with the rest of the New Testament, may well have been written before 70 AD, Luke's nearness in time to the events he is recording would certainly emphasize the importance of the question and suggest the need for a longer pause before answering it. But as a statement of abstract principle, W. C. Robinson's dictum remains logically unexceptionable: 'correct local colour cannot guarantee overall historical reliability' (The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement, 1976, p. 86). If Luke therefore has got his theology wrong, there is an immediate end to his overall historical reliability.
Now, with theology pure and simple, a classicist is clearly out of his depth. And it might be thought that, in light of the theologians' verdict on Acts, there is little comment that a classicist could helpfully add, were it not for two considerations that now emerge. Acts is manifestly not a formal treatise of systematic theology; it is not even primarily a history of theology. It is a narrative. What system, or systems, of theology it bears witness to must be deduced from the narrative. And that is true whether one is thinking of what Luke may incidentally record about other people's theology, or of what he may directly or indirectly indicate as his own theological stance.
It is also apparent to all that the theologians who claim that Luke has misrepresented the theology of the early Christians are not themselves agreed on what Luke's theology is and wherein he has distorted the theology of the early Christians. Conzelmann, Haenchen, Wilckens and W. C. Robinson maintain that Luke rejected the early Christians' expectation of an imminent Parousia and substituted for it a theology of a delayed Parousia. Kümmell stoutly denies this. Kümmell, in company with Vielhauer, and Haenchen and others, maintains that Luke has misrepresented and corrupted the theology of Paul. Wilckens stoutly denies this.
And the reason for their disagreement is also readily apparent to all: while the theologians all start from the same narrative text, they disagree over what theology can rightly be deduced from that text.
At this, classicists will once more feel at home, especially classicists of a literary bent. It has long been a common exercise among them to take, say, the text of the plays of the great tragedians and deduce from them the 'meaning' intended by their authors, and all sorts of other things besides. Aeschylus' theology springs at once to mind, but his politics come a close second. Aeschylus has been held by some to have believed in a Zeus who developed; and, by others, in a Zeus who remained static. His Eumenides has been variously taken to reveal that in politics he was
- for the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles; or
- against the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles; or
- for the reforms of Ephialtes and against those of Pericles; and
- not interested in either the reforms of Ephialtes or those of Pericles.
Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus shows, if you listen to some expositors, that Sophocles discovered the Oedipus complex long before Freud; others will tell you that the play has nothing to do with the Oedipus complex. From Euripides' Bacchae it has been deduced that Euripides was:
- a rationalist pouring scorn on religion and on the supernatural;
- a penitent recanting his former atheism and returning to the fold of religion;
- neither one nor the other, but a psychologist using religious forms as symbols of psychological urges; and that, as such, he recommended indulgence in the ecstatic Dionysiac experience and condemned its repression; or, alternatively, that he hated Dionysiac indulgence and all its works and recommended tight control, if not complete suppression.
In the light of this record, no classical scholar could afford to point a finger at New Testament scholars for disagreeing on what theology should be deduced from Acts; but a classical scholar might well be tempted to surmise that the same causes as underlie the disarray among the classicists might possibly account for a good deal of the disagreement among the theologians too.
Now, one of the main causes of the disagreement among the classicists is the habit of building up an interpretation of an author's meaning by expounding what is not in the author's text at all, sometimes to the complete neglect of what is. It is a habit which, of course, all classicists deplore, but which, like the taint of original sin, they find very difficult entirely to avoid. When it is isolated from the living mass of actual expositions and baldly described in the abstract and, so to speak, in cold blood, the habit appears so strange that it is difficult to believe that any scholar could ever be guilty of falling into it. And yet, as H. D. F. Kitto has constantly and trenchantly observed, it can be found exemplified in the pages of the most reputable classical commentators.
'Could it possibly be, then,' says the classicist to himself as he approaches the immense literature on Acts, 'that New Testament scholars have from time to time unwittingly fallen into the same habit and so contributed to the prevailing disagreement over Luke's theology?' And the classicist does not have to go far to find the answer.
Take, for example, the ascension scene in Acts 1:9–11. The text reads:
And when he had said these things, as they were looking, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight. And as they were looking steadfastly into heaven as he was going, behold two men stood by them in white apparel who also said, Men of Galilee why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven shall so come in the same manner as you saw him go into heaven.
With these few words, Luke has painted an exceedingly vivid scene: the wonder and mystery of the ascending Lord, the upturned faces of the apostles and the startling appearance of the two angels with their question and assurances. Naturally, scholars have asked themselves what was the import of the angels' words. Renan understood their words as a consolation (Les Apôtres, 1866, p. 103). Not so, says Haenchen, for 'then one would expect to find some explicit word of consolation in their message' (p. 150). Haenchen, we pause to notice with satisfaction, appears to hold to the principle that a writer normally says what he means and that his meaning is therefore in the first instance to be gathered from what he says rather than from what he does not say.
Loisy was of the opinion, so Haenchen reminds us, that the angels were telling the men to stop looking up into heaven, because it was a waste of time: 'C'est temps perdu. Le Christ est parti, bien parti' (Les Actes des Apôtres, Paris, 1920, p. 162). 'Equally wrong', says Haenchen, and then prepares to tell us himself what the real import of the angels' words is.
Naturally, after his comment on Renan's suggestion, we expect that Haenchen will now point us to some statement in the text that hitherto neither Renan, nor Loisy, nor anybody else has noticed. Here it is: 'Their looking skyward is not forbidden for the reason which Loisy suggests . . . but because it expresses the imminent expectation, which Luke does not mention [emphasis mine] but only describes by this attitude'.
Alas for our hopes! The key to the meaning of the angels' words turns out after all to be something that is not in the text. But let us restrain our disappointment, for perhaps things are not as bad as they seem. The claim is that the angels are rebuking the apostles for expecting Christ's imminent return. True, Luke does not say in so many words that they were expecting him to return at once; but he describes their posture—looking up steadfastly into heaven—and apparently he means us to perceive that this posture indicates that they were in fact expecting Christ's imminent return.
But if Luke does not say that this is what their posture indicates, how does Haenchen know that it does? It is not the only interpretation of their posture; indeed, it is not even the most obvious. Shock at the sudden departure, grief at the loss of the Saviour, wonder at the miracle of the ascension, overawed surprise at the sudden realization of the nearness of the other world—any or all of these could account for their continuing to look up into heaven. How then does Haenchen know that Luke intended their posture to indicate their expectation of Christ's imminent return and none of these other things?
The answer is that he knows it because of something else that Luke did not put in his text!
. . . the mortals are rebuked for their human reaction: 'Why do you stand looking into heaven?' The Jesus who has been received up from the disciples into heaven will return thence in like fashion as they have seen him go—there is not a word as to the 'when'. Their looking skywards is 'forbidden . . . because it expresses the imminent expectation . . .'
In other words, it is the absence from the angels' announcement of the return; of any mention of the 'when' of that return, that proves that the apostles were expecting an imminent return. Haenchen is apparently oblivious of the fact that, if the apostles were standing there intently gazing at the sky because they expected Christ to return any minute, the angels ought to have said something about the 'when' of the return, if they were to have any hope of getting them to stop gazing.
To see that, let us adopt Haenchen's supposition and then try, on its basis, to follow the thought flow of the passage. The angels' words consist of three elements: the question, 'Why do you stand looking into heaven?', which is clearly intended to get the apostles to stop looking; and a statement containing two parts, which just as clearly is meant to give the reason(s) why they should stop looking. The first part of this statement is an assurance that Jesus will return: 'This Jesus who was taken from you into heaven shall so come . . .'. But the apostles, according to Haenchen's supposition, already know this; indeed, it is the reason why they are looking. Merely to assure them that Jesus will return will simply encourage them to keep on looking. It follows that this first part of the angels' statement cannot be left to stand on its own: something must be added, otherwise the mere assurance that Christ is coming back will be not be a reason for the apostles to cease looking.
Suppose a little child has been taken to the railway station to see her father off to the battle front; and when the train eventually disappears through the tunnel at the end of the platform, the child stands mesmerized, looking at the gaping tunnel, unable to reconcile herself emotionally to the fact that daddy has really gone. It will at least make sense for mother simply to say, 'Come on, let's go. Daddy will come back again' (meaning one of these days). But if the child has got it firmly into her head that the train that took daddy away is already in reverse and about to reappear within the next five minutes or half an hour, the simple statement 'Daddy will come back again' will be incomprehensible to the child as a reason for going. Mother will have to add something like, 'Yes, daddy will come back, but not today, perhaps tomorrow, or next week, but not today. So let's go home first and have dinner'.
So, of course, the angels do not leave the first part of the statement to stand by itself: they add something. And what they add must now be regarded as the operative part of the sentence: if the first part of the sentence has not given the reason for ceasing to look, the second part must do so.
But the second part, instead of saying something relevant about the delayed time of the return, talks of something quite different: the manner of the return: 'he shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven'. But how can the manner of the return be offered as a reason for ceasing to look to men who, according to Haenchen, are expecting the return to take place imminently? I can think of only one way that someone might try to construe the thought flow, as follows: 'Stop looking! He is coming back, but it will be exactly the same as when you saw him go' (or, 'You've seen it already: there will be nothing new to see; so stop looking').
But that is unacceptable nonsense, since it requires us to jettison both parts of the angels' statement as being equally irrelevant as reasons for stopping the apostolic gaze. Of course, we can still make sense of the passage by disregarding what Luke has written, and assuming he meant something that he has not written; but on that principle, we might find ourselves having to rewrite the whole of Acts.
Perhaps, then, like Socrates before a dialectical aporia, we ought to backtrack. Could it be that we have arrived at this nonsense because we have been unfair to Haenchen's original supposition in adopting it without simultaneously adopting another supposition that is an essential partner of the first?
We have taken his assumption that, by describing the apostles as continuing to look steadfastly into heaven, Luke, without explicitly saying so, means to indicate that they were expecting the imminent return of Christ; but we have neglected his other assumption that, in so describing the apostles' posture, Luke was not writing as a historian. He was 'moulding' this episode in order to correct certain wrong attitudes on the part of the Christians of his own day.
Taken as literal history, the story would simply state that the apostles' expectation of the imminent return led them to adopt the physical posture of standing looking up into the sky; which posture they would have continued to maintain—at least until exhaustion overtook them—unless the angels had persuaded them with suitable words to give up this physical posture and go home. But the Christians of Luke's day, even if they believed in the imminence of the return, did not have to be dissuaded from the physical posture of standing looking up into the sky, but from the mental attitude of supposing that the return was imminent. The physical posture of the apostles on Ascension Day, so the claim goes, is meant by Luke not as history but as a kind of 'model' (Haenchen's word, p. 151) of the mental attitude of the Church of Luke's own day:
It was not Luke the historian who moulded this episode, nor yet the pious story-teller but (if one may for once so pointedly express it) the conscientious Christian [what 'conscientious' means when applied to deliberate distortions of history is not altogether clear] wanting to help his brothers understand their existence as God willed they should . . . the disciples are not presented, here, in their private relationship with Jesus; they are rather the representatives of the Church, which must learn its right relationship to the Ascension and the Parousia. (p. 151)
It follows then that, if Luke's depiction of the apostles was intended as a model and not as history, we may well have been unfair to Haenchen, and false in our methodology, to insist on treating the narrative as though it were an historical narrative.
But how, may we ask before we go further, does Haenchen know that it was Luke's intention to 'mould' history in this way? The answer is that he knows once more because of things that are not in Luke's text, and this time a whole host of things that are not in the text.
He 'knows' that Luke was not trying to write history because, in the first place, features 'so dear to legend, are entirely lacking: the story is unsentimental, almost uncannily severe. There is no vestige of popular tradition . . .' (p. 151). This, one must say, is a most unusual variation on a common theme. Normally a record is judged to be unhistorical if it contains legendary features. Luke's narrative apparently must be judged unhistorical for not containing any legendary features! Haenchen's argument seems to be that Luke could not have had any reliable source for his story of the ascension. If, therefore, he had set out to write an historical account, he would have had to depend on popular tradition with all its legendary accretions. The fact that there are no legendary accretions in his account shows, therefore, that he was not trying to write an historical account; he was simply making up the account himself.
This is a bold argument, certainly: singlehanded, it could take on all the very best historians of the ancient world and prove that they weren't good historians at all. And the better historians they were, the more easily it could prove that they weren't.
But absence of legendary material is not the only omission that 'proves' that Luke was not writing history. His account 'does not explain the Ascension' but simply 'corrects the attitude which the disciples adopt towards it'. Furthermore, it does not supply a psychological explanation of this wrong and surprising attitude. Nothing is said, moreover,
of the disciples' feelings when their Lord is taken away, nothing of the impression made on mortals by the envoys from the heavenly world (cf. Luke 24:4), nothing of any farewell gesture of blessing such as Jesus makes in Luke 24:51.
This is certainly an impressive list of omissions, although one must observe that Luke himself reminds us in the very first words of Acts that he has already written an account of the ascension in his Gospel (Luke 24); it therefore remains a puzzle to understand why the account in Acts cannot be regarded as historical because it does not repeat details that are given in the Gospel.
More disturbing are the incidental implications of Haenchen's argument for modern newspaper reporting. Take, for instance, the following brief report: 'Yesterday the French government set off an atomic device in the Pacific. A number of fishing vessels, packed with protesters, tried to prevent the explosion; but they were persuaded by the French officials to leave the area before the device was detonated'.
According to Haenchen's criteria, it is now clear that this report was obviously not intended as history: it has no legendary accretions; it does not explain the mechanics of the alleged atomic explosion, but simply corrects the attitude of the protesters towards it. Nor does it explain how the protesters came to have this wrong attitude. Nothing is said, moreover, of their feelings when they saw the explosion take place; nor is there given any description of the resultant mushroom cloud such as is provided in physics books dealing with atomic bombs, or even in earlier issues of the same newspaper.
Clearly, such missing features do not preclude historical reporting. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let us concede for the moment Haenchen's criteria for determining what is and what is not intended as history, and let us assume with him that Luke was not intending to write an historical account of what happened on Ascension Day, but rather a story so 'moulded' as to correct the wrong attitude of his contemporaries.
On this understanding, it will then be proper to enquire how well Luke has done his 'moulding'; how well he has adapted the literary means to the desired theological and pastoral end. He certainly had a severely difficult task. The mistaken 'belief in the imminence of the last days' was, so Haenchen tells us, 'still dominant in many Christian communities' in Luke's day (p. 151), supposedly a long time later. Moreover, he says it was still dominant for the simple reason that, right from the very first, it had always been dominant: 'The first generation was dominated by the expectation of the imminent end' (p. 152). And the first generation, of course, included the apostles. Indeed, how else would the imminent expectation ever have come to be dominant among Luke's contemporaries had they not been led to believe that the apostles had held this view throughout their lives, and that it was from the apostles that they had themselves, directly or indirectly, received it? What is more, according to Haenchen, this conviction of theirs was true, and Luke knew it was true; for it is Luke who now 'replaces this view . . . by a new form of the Christian hope' (p. 152); and one does not set about replacing what has always been a dominant view with a new view without being aware that the new view is new. And that is presumably why he had to proceed, as Haenchen tells us, 'with the utmost discretion' (p. 152).
Now, theoretically, if Luke was not writing history, he was free to 'mould' his story any way he wished, within reasonable limits, much like a Greek tragedian remoulding one of the ancient myths in order to put across his own particular interpretation. Luke could have chosen to say that the apostles had never held the view that the Parousia was imminent, and had never preached it. But he did not choose to claim this— understandably, for then Luke's contemporaries would have found it inexplicable how the view had ever arisen and how they themselves had come to accept it as the dominant view.
On the other hand, Luke could not admit that the apostles had ever preached the imminence of the Parousia, for then he would have had to claim that, at the first, the apostolic preaching was mistaken, that the apostles subsequently discovered it was, and that they then started to deny what they earlier had preached and to preach the correct view.
So he hit upon the idea of representing the apostles as having held the expectation of the imminent Parousia for a short while, and then as having abandoned it before they had the chance to do any preaching. This would admittedly leave unsolved the question of how then did the belief in the imminent Parousia get started and become and continue to be the dominant view if, from the first, the apostles had never preached other than the contrary view. But there are obviously limits to what you can do when you are remoulding history!
Then there was another difficulty: Luke's contemporaries were not modern liberal theologians, but first-century Christians who believed that doctrinally the apostles were the very foundation and pillars of the church. To tell them that the apostles spent the forty days after the resurrection discussing with the risen Christ the timing of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel and being briefed on their worldwide mission (Acts 1:1–6, 8)—see Appendix 1; and then to suggest that the apostles were still mistaken over the question of the Parousia—see Appendix 2; well, even the possibility of it would be very difficult for Luke's contemporaries to envisage, let alone accept. Haenchen himself has reminded us that Luke had to use the utmost discretion to get the idea across.
So apparently Luke decided that he had better not say explicitly that the apostles ever held the mistaken view that the return was imminent. Instead, he would convey the idea by depicting the apostles in a symbolic stance. He would depict the apostles standing, after the ascension, looking up into the sky at the point where Christ had disappeared. His readers would then tumble to the fact that they were standing there expecting Christ to return. They would then realize that they themselves were doing the same thing: not literally standing looking up into the sky, of course, but looking in a metaphorical sense for Christ to come any minute. And then Luke would tell how angels came and told the apostles to stop their physical looking; and Luke's readers would gather that their metaphorical looking was likewise to cease.
So Luke set about writing this 'moulded' story of the ascension—only to find himself faced with another difficulty. His contemporaries for whom he wrote would take all he said as the very literal history, and he must ensure that they did so. Only by doing so would they then be likely or willing to take the history as having an added symbolic message for themselves. Once let them suspect that Luke's story was not historically true, then Luke's attempt to replace the dominant view of the Parousia with his own new view would founder.
It was, then, a very delicate task that Luke set himself, and we turn now with great interest to his text to see with what skill and care he phrased his story so as to overcome all the difficulties and accomplish the purpose to which, according to Haenchen, he now bent his literary powers.
He begins: 'And having said [aorist participle] these things as they were looking [present participle] he was carried up and a cloud received him out of their sight' (Acts 1:9). So they were looking when it happened. Of course they were looking. If twelve men are standing listening to someone speak, it is only natural that they should look at him. Yes, but they continued looking until a cloud received him out of their sight. Does that indicate what their belief about the Parousia was? Of course not. No one would so read it. If twelve men are standing looking at someone talking to them and that someone presently begins to lift off, rise into the air and ascend into the sky, natural reaction alone would account for their continuing to follow him with their eyes until he disappeared. You could tell nothing about their views on the Parousia from that.
But now comes the critical moment. Now, if ever, Luke must choose his phrases very carefully; he must depict their continued looking after Christ's disappearance so that his contemporary readers will realize there is something more in their posture than the mere natural reaction to seeing someone rise up in front of their eyes and disappear into the sky. Their continued looking must be so described that it proclaims to all except the very dimmest that it is the attitude of men who are now expecting Christ's imminent return. So we might expect Luke to continue:
and a cloud received him out of their sight. But the apostles continued looking. And it came to pass that when they had continued now for a long time standing and looking up into heaven with great expectancy, behold two men in white apparel appeared . . .
Alas, Luke does not say that, nor anything like it. Indeed, he has gone out of his way to say something quite different. Having heard Acts 1:9 say that the apostles watched Christ ascending until a cloud received him out of their sight, we imagined that Acts 1:10 would proceed to tell us what happened after that. Instead, Luke backtracks in time: 'And as they were gazing steadfastly into heaven as he was going [poreuomenou autou] behold two men stood by them.' The participle is a present participle, not an aorist! Luke is going out of his way to tell us that there was no long period of waiting and looking between Christ's disappearance and the appearance of the angels. There was no interval at all. Christ had not yet disappeared when the angels came and stood by the apostles: they came while Christ was still going! The idea that after Christ's disappearance there was an interval of continued standing and looking up into heaven, thus silently revealing that the apostles were expecting Christ's imminent return, turns out to be pure imagination on our part. There was no interval. Not only is it not in Luke's text: his text says the very opposite.
Luke's contemporaries, then, would not have gathered from Luke's text thus far that Luke's depiction of the apostles' looking up into heaven expressed the apostles' expectation of the imminent return, still less that it symbolized their own. Their looking, so far, has been occasioned simply by the sight of Christ ascending. But Luke has one last chance, if he will take it, to convert his contemporaries from their belief in the imminence of the Parousia. He has still to record the angels' words. He must, as we have said before, so record them as his contemporaries will believe them to be the words that the angels actually spoke to the apostles at this particular juncture on Ascension Day. But since, according to Haenchen, Luke was 'moulding' the episode somewhat, Luke was free to put into the angels' mouths more or less any words he chose.
Let us consider first of all the effect of the angels' words on the apostles as Luke relates it. He says simply, 'Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called the Mount of Olives'. We mustn't complain; but it is, from the point of view of Luke's supposed purpose, a very bald statement. All that one could with certainty deduce from it would be that the apostles stopped looking up into the sky, moved away from the spot on which they had been standing and went home. One could argue that it shows that they had given up the expectation that Christ would return within the next hour, or twelve, or twenty-four hours, but hardly that they had abandoned their belief that the Parousia was imminent. After all, Luke's contemporaries themselves did not spend all the hours of daylight rooted to one spot looking up into the sky. They went around like anybody else. And yet it would be quite mistaken to deduce from this that they had abandoned belief in the imminence of the Parousia. Haenchen himself agrees that they still entertained this imminent expectation. And in consequence they themselves would never have gathered, from the plain observation that the apostles ceased their physical gazing at the sky and went home, that the apostles had abandoned expectation of the imminent return. If ever they were to gather this, they must gather it from the angels' words. Somehow or other these words must convey an explicit, or very clearly implicit, denial not of the Return itself, of course, but of the imminence of the return.
The words convey no such thing. There is no need to repeat the detailed analysis that we made above. The angels' words persuade the apostles to give up looking and go home solely on the grounds of the certainty of the return and of the manner of the return. 'There is,' let Haenchen remind us, 'not a word as to the "when".'
In the light, then, of what Luke's text actually says, Haenchen's interpretation of the ascension narrative is untenable: it goes against the thought flow of the passage. The key phrases necessary to turn the account of the apostles' physical reaction to the ascension into an expression of their mental attitude towards the second coming are, in Luke's text, ruinously different from what they must have been for Haenchen's interpretation to be true.
It follows from this, that Luke's readers would not have perceived that Luke's account of the ascension was really a parable intended to correct their own attitude to the second advent; not at least if they paid close attention to what Luke actually wrote. But a problem remains: how in this case did Haenchen come to see in Luke's narrative an intention that was not there? One is tempted to think that, like we all do from time to time, Haenchen came to the study of the narrative with the idea already in his mind that Luke intended it as a parable. But we cannot see into Haenchen's mind, and it would be unfair to that most learned of scholars to suppose we can. We would do better to stick to what Haenchen has actually written; for in his own exposition we can see the process going on that, for Haenchen, turned the historical account of the ascension into a kind of parable.
We start with his comment on the angels' words in Acts 1:11: 'Just as in Luke 24, the mortals are rebuked for the human reaction: "Why do you stand looking into heaven?"' (p. 150). 'Rebuke', one must say, is a very harsh reading of their words: it implies that what the apostles were doing was blameworthy. And, after all, what they were doing—following the ascent of Christ until he disappeared from view—was only, as Haenchen himself phrases it, a very 'human reaction'. Never mind: let Haenchen have his description 'rebuke', for his other phrase, 'human reaction', is very fair and accurate.
But now changes begin to occur in Haenchen's terminology. Six lines further down, 'human reaction' becomes 'attitude'; a page more, and 'human reaction' becomes 'the attitude which the disciples adopt'. The changes are small but subtle; for while it is true that people can react to some situation by adopting an attitude, 'adopted attitudes' are not necessarily the same as 'reactions', and they can be very different. If a supersonic jet suddenly swoops over my rooftop, and, as the roar strikes me, I look up and follow the flight of the aircraft until it disappears from view, you might fittingly describe my looking as a 'human reaction'. It would not, however, be necessarily true to say that my looking indicated that I had adopted an attitude towards the departing jet.
But the change from 'reaction' to 'adopted attitude' already begins to make possible the interpretation of the ascension narrative as a parable written for the benefit of Luke's contemporaries. You could talk of the reaction of the apostles to the ascension, but you couldn't talk of the reaction of Luke's contemporaries to the ascension. You could, on the other hand, conceivably talk of the attitude of Luke's contemporaries to that event. Even so, 'attitude to the ascension' is still not quite change enough. What is needed is 'attitude to the second coming'. So, starting with 'human reaction' (to the ascension), Haenchen proceeds to 'attitude' and thus to 'attitude' which 'expresses the imminent expectation' (of the second coming). My 'reaction to the jet' has become my 'attitude to the jet' has become my 'attitude which expresses my expectation of the imminent return of the jet'.
The changes are slight, but crucial. If they had any authority in Luke's text, Haenchen's interpretation, which depends on them, would be more convincing. But the changes are only changes in Haenchen's terminology; they show us, not the developing thrust of Luke's narrative, but the evolution of Haenchen's thinking.
Haenchen has one plea left, which, were it allowable, might go some way towards explaining why the elements crucial to his own interpretation are absent from Luke's text. Haenchen explains,
The first generation was dominated by the expectation of the imminent end. Luke replaces this view—with the utmost discretion, as must be said both here and in 1:6—by a new form of the Christian hope . . .
Well, if it was in fact Luke's intention to replace the Christian hope held by the apostles and all the Christians of the first century with something quite different and, nonetheless for that, to preserve his reputation as one 'built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets', it is understandable that he would have had to write 'with the utmost discretion'.
But it is useless to plead that it was discretion that led him to omit from his narrative the phrases that were indispensable to his alleged purpose; for the only valid evidence for discovering what that purpose was is what Luke has actually put in his text. We could all attribute any intention we liked to Luke, if we were allowed to argue that Luke, for reasons of tact, has omitted from his text all the evidence that he had such a purpose.
Appendix 1
Haenchen's comment on Acts 1:3 is both unfair and inaccurate. He writes:
The reference to the reign of God in Acts 1:3 is only a literary device to prepare the readers for the question of the disciples about it in Acts 1:6. If anyone takes the words of Acts 1:3 seriously as history—that Jesus talked about the kingdom of God with his disciples for forty days—he either makes Jesus a preposterously poor teacher who cannot clarify what he means in ever so long a period, or he makes the disciples appear incredibly foolish. Luke intended neither the one nor the other. So we are left with the explanation that already in Acts 1:3 the author wanted to suggest the theme of Acts 1:6. He did not reflect upon the consequence which Acts 1:3 would have if understood historically, because he did not mean this verse historically. (Studies in Luke-Acts, pp. 260–1)
On a lighter note, it might be truer to say that Luke did not reflect on the possibility that his Greek would be translated inaccurately and then expounded pedantically! Luke does not say that Christ talked about the kingdom of God for forty days. Di' hēmerōn tesserakonta can mean either 'for forty days' or 'now and then in the course of forty days'. Which it means here is shown by the fact that Christ is said to have appeared to his apostles di' hēmerōn tesserakonta, and we know from Luke 24 that Luke did not mean that there was one continuous appearing lasting forty days, but a number of separate appearances occurring now and then in the course of forty days. Haenchen knew this, of course, for in The Acts of the Apostles he says that di' hēmerōn tesserakonta 'is Hellenistic for "within forty days"' (English translation, p. 141). But in Studies in Luke-Acts, he is looking round for evidence to try and prove that Luke did not intend his work to be understood historically, and so he chooses the translation of di' hēmerōn tesserakonta that would make the historical understanding look foolish.
And then, of course, the kingdom of God is a many-sided and complex subject. In the Gospel, Luke tells us it involved, on more than one occasion, extensive interpretation of the Old Testament (Luke 24:27, 45–47). Certainly, in the introduction to Acts, he stresses that part of the subject that had to do with the restoration of the kingdom to Israel and the timetable of that restoration. But it is pedantic to insist, after what Luke has told us in the Gospel, that in the introduction he means to imply that for forty days the one and only aspect of the kingdom that Christ talked of to his apostles was the question of the timing of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, and that, after the forty days, the apostles still misunderstood this one point.
But then Haenchen does not believe that Christ did expound the Old Testament to his apostles in the course of his appearances as Luke 24 says he did. So to him, 'the kingdom of God' in Acts 1:3 must not be understood in the light of Luke 24; it must be made to mean only the question of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, so that then it will look foolish if interpreted as history; which will then prove Haenchen's point that it is not history.
Appendix 2
Haenchen sees the problem of implying the apostles' ignorance and, for his part, relieves the apostles of all charge of ignorance and unspirituality. But he then proceeds to suggest a purpose for Luke's recording of the apostles' question which, if it were true, would convict the apostles of lunacy. He writes
The question is not meant to show the disciples' ignorance, but provides an opportunity to clarify a problem of the highest significance. The earlier Christians regarded the outpouring of the Spirit as a sign that the end of the world was at hand. With this in mind it is easy to understand why they would ask, 'Is the kingdom coming now, at the same time as the Spirit?'
And Haenchen then goes on to explain how Luke, having voiced the apostles' question based on this unfortunate idea, then recorded Christ's answer to the question, which, Haenchen supposes, indicated that their expectation of the imminent end of the world was mistaken. But to suggest that the apostles should have been expecting the restoration of the kingdom to Israel to be immediately followed by the end of the world is ludicrous. Haenchen has made the mistake of unconsciously supposing that the apostles held the same prophetic views as himself. Haenchen doubtless does not believe in a millennium. For him 'the Parousia' and 'the end of the world' are synonymous terms and simultaneous events. But that is not what the apostles believed. Their expectation was built on prophecies like Ezekiel's: the kingdom would be restored to Israel under David their king, the Messiah. They would enjoy peace and prosperity. Then, after some period of unspecified length, Gog and Magog would come up and attack the land of Israel, and God would repulse them (see Ezekiel 36–40). The Apocalypse, as many have recognized, prophesies the same order of events. It is this that the early Christians expected, and not what Haenchen supposes.
